Big Man, Small Changes, New Life

Too many times he had been tagged in a picture on Facebook and cringed at the way he looked.

He had made too many trips to the chiropractor for his aching back. The chiropractor didn’t mince words: “You’re huge,” he told Hokanson. “That’s a lot of weight you’re carrying around.”

He was huge. Yes, he’s 6-foot-6, but he was tipping the scale between 305 and 310 every time he went to the doctor. His cholesterol was high. So was his blood pressure. “I figured I was heading for heart attack land,” he said.

In February 2015, Hokanson was talking with a buddy who wanted to gain weight (one of those lucky people). The friend was using MyFitnessPal to track his workouts and his calories. Hokanson downloaded the app that night, without telling anyone, and started using it. He entered his current weight as 300 pounds—“I was lying to myself,” he said—and entered his goal weight as 225, which was what he weighed when he graduated high school.

He got a Fitbit zip and started logging his steps. Soon he was trying to get in 20,000 steps a day, about 9 miles. A software architect who works at home, he spends most of his 9-to-5 hours on the phone, managing his team. So instead of sitting at his desk, he wore a wireless headset and walked around during calls. He started taking his youngest two of four children on long walks outside around their neighborhood in Zimmerman, Minnesota, pulling them around in a buggy.

And Hokanson, now 38, learned to make better food choices. Out with the chicken wings and chips. “A bag of Doritos might as well have been a single serving,” he said. In came the vegetables, like zucchini and cabbage, foods he could eat a lot of without worrying about racking up the calories.

The results were almost immediate. The weight started falling off. Around town, people started asking his wife, Tiffany, if he had been sick. At a trip to the doctor, the nurse did a double take, and then checked the scale to make sure it wasn’t broken. Once, on a rare business trip into his office, coworkers didn’t recognize him. He remembers sitting in a conference room before a meeting and hearing one colleague say, “We’re waiting for Ben to get here.”

Hokanson wears the HOKA Vanquish 3, his shoe of choice for training and competing.

Ackerman + Gruber

A true competitor

The only problem was the 20,000 steps. It was taking too long. So running was the natural way to progress. Hokanson started following a couch to 5K training plan and targeted a July 4 5K race.

Even though he was down to about 260 when he started running, it was a challenge at first. Hokanson was fine with the 90-second intervals of running at the beginning, but when the program jumped up to 10 minutes, that was daunting. “It was horrible, I was like, how do people do this?” he said. “This is crazy. I’m out of breath, I feel like I’m dying. It is so hard. But I just wanted to see if I could do it and do this 5K.”

As he had months earlier when he began his weight loss journey, he stuck with it. He calls himself unusually goal-oriented, enjoying tracking his progress, whether it’s on his Garmin, Fitbit, or Strava. He’s always trying to best himself from the day before.

In 2014 (left), Hokanson weighed more than 300 pounds and suffered from back pain and high blood pressure. These days he’s a competitive triathlete.

Ackerman + Gruber

He expected to finish that first race in about 27 minutes. When he saw 25 minutes on the clock, he was shocked—and thrilled. And he had unleashed a competitive side he didn’t know he had.

A 5K turned into a 10K—Hokanson had achieved his goal weight by October 2015—and by April 2016, he was running his first half marathon, wearing HOKAs, which is the brand he noticed the runners he admired on Strava wearing. Hokanson ordered his first pair online in the spring of 2016, and “absolutely fell in love with them,” he said. He hasn’t worn anything else since.

Then he bought a bike, started swimming, and planning for his first triathlon. He didn’t go small on that, either, choosing a half Ironman (1.2-mile swim, 56-mile bike, and 13.1-mile run) in Racine, Wisconsin.

In a stroke of luck, the swim portion was cancelled for his first one, because he didn’t feel confident he’d be able to navigate the two-foot waves on Lake Michigan that day. Last October, he completed the Miami half Ironman in six hours. He did Racine again in July and his half marathon split was 1:41, an average of 7:42 per mile.

Hokanson excels on the bike as well as the run during his triathlons. He’s quickly improving over the swim portion, too.

Ackerman + Gruber

Now hovering around 220 pounds—down almost 90 since he started his journey—he’s signed up for a full Ironman this month. He has hired a coach who is helping him with his training, and he consistently ranks in the top quarter of competitors in his age group.

Nothing about Hokanson goes easy anymore. But he knows he’s unusual that way. His advice for people who are looking to lose weight and improve their fitness? “Just start,” he says. “Make a plan, download an app, take the first step. Just start.”

He also urges people to reconsider what they think is holding them back. “What this whole journey has taught me is that a lot of those limitations you think you have, they’re in your mind. You think you have these limitations, but you probably don’t,” he said. “You just have to keep moving forward, and you’re going to get better. If you miss a workout or pig out or something goes wrong with your diet, you can’t change what happened. You can only change what you’re going to do about it now.”

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
Runner's World participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.